Tech —

Review: WD TV Play is a set-top box made for streaming junkies

It's especially useful if you have a lot of locally stored content.

With the huge variety of music and movie streaming services available, set-top boxes have become abundantly available as affordable alternatives to standard cable and satellite subscriptions. Companies like Roku, Apple, and Boxee have come to this niche with their own little streaming gadgets, offering up content like movie rentals and direct downloads through various third-party services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Vudu. There is no longer any need to have a cable subscription to get access to all of the latest entertainment.

Set-top boxes aren't exactly foreign territory for Western Digital. Its WD TV Live has been around for several iterations, beginning with the first-generation WD TV that plugged into a TV to play content from any flash drive or external hard drive. The company's new product, the $69.99 WD TV Play, builds on the functionality of its predecessors in an attempt to offer a device that ranks alongside Apple and Roku's affordable choices. Those who own the previous WD TV Live probably won't want to switch out their device for the Play, but those who haven't picked up a set-top box yet and are looking for something very specifically tailored to their entertainment needs may find that this device fits the bill.

A set-top box is literally a box

It might seem redundant, but the now-uniform design for set-top boxes works because it doesn't obstruct the other technology taking up the shelves in the entertainment center—plus, it's easy to plug in and take out. WD TV Play features the now-standard set-top box design that makes it just as easy to store as its competitors. The previous WD TV Live was a tad bigger and bulkier than WD's other products, presumably because of the components contained inside, but Western Digital went for a different form factor for this version. It even painted the bottom of the box in the company's signature blue.

The WD TV Play looks a lot like other set-top boxes out there.

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The back of the WD TV Play.

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On the back of the device, the Play includes an HDMI connector, composite AV for older televisions, an optical digital output, and an Ethernet port. If you don't have a wired Ethernet connection available near your television set, you can use the device's built-in Wireless-N capabilities. It also features an easy-to-access USB port conveniently located on the side for external hard drives and flash drives.

The WD TV Play is just a tad smaller than its predecessor, the WD TV Live.

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The plastic remote that comes packaged with the device features all the standard playback and navigational buttons as well as three hot keys for Netflix, Vudu, and Hulu Plus, though they can be reprogrammed to launch other services. If you happen to lose the remote somewhere in the couch cushions or would rather take advantage of an actual keyboard input for setting up all of your different accounts, Western Digital offers a WD TV Remote app for iOS and Android users.

The Remote app has all the same controls featured on the physical remote, plus options for keyboard input, volume control (which worked with the monitor we had hooked up to the device via HDMI), a services panel, and favorite hot keys. You can engage the gesture pad for navigation throughout the varying menus, though we found this option difficult to use because of a slight learning curve. Also, while the keyboard works properly with Western Digital’s native software featured on the Play, it had some issues with search queries within third-party applications like Hulu Plus, YouTube, and Netflix. It worked fine with apps like Facebook. You probably won't need the keyboard too often, though, as the scroll-through functionality in the interface is surprisingly fast.

Setup features plenty of handy options.

Once the WD TV Play is all plugged in, you can go into Setup by navigating over to the button on the home page. From there, you can choose video and audio output, aspect ratio, and even perform a screen size collaboration. You can also check for new firmware, set up automatic firmware downloads, choose encoding support, and adjust the remote's settings.

All the streaming services you need, except for a few you want

The WD TV Play enables access to over 30 different streaming services, including Netfix, Hulu Plus, Spotify, Pandora Radio, TuneIn, and Vudu. For photography buffs with vacation slideshows, Flickr and Picasa are also available, while Web videos can be viewed via YouTube or Vimeo. You can also comment on your friends' feeds and share what you're watching to Facebook right from the WD TV Play.

Some of the 33 apps available for the WD TV Play.

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Sports fans might be a bit out of luck, however, as WD TV doesn't offer official apps for MLB, NBA, or NHL. There is no marketplace of any sort to download extra channels, though the company does send out firmware updates with new ones from time to time. The Play is also missing the increasingly essential HBO Go and Amazon Instant Video channels. While Western Digital does point out the fact that its set-top boxes support Slingbox, that's not exactly a big draw for users who want to swap out cable boxes for a more cost-efficient solution. The Slingbox feature is probably most helpful for those who travel and would like access to their content at home on the big screen, but not for those who just want a simple solution for entertainment.

Most of the applications sport Western Digital's signature "Mochi" interface. It's certainly gone through some aesthetic changes with each generation, but overall the navigation has stayed the same: the menu lives at the bottom of the screen and you can sift through options by cycling through left or right. Apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus have their own proprietary set-top interface, while apps like Spotify have adopted WD's Mochi.

Overall, navigating through the Play is quite pleasant. Some of the tiles on the home page, such as the Accuweather application, are configurable to act like widgets. You can also press the option key for each app to unpin or move them around.

Playing local content

The Play’s localized content feature is what really seals the deal for this set-top box. You can stream all types of content from a plugged in portable storage device or through a network via DLNA. Playback was a breeze for most file types, though there was a bit of stuttering while attempting to shuffle through songs or fast forward through video. During music playback, you can shuffle through your library and peek at the upcoming song in the bottom right-hand corner of the interface. The device prominently displays album art and track information, though in some instances the song would play before the WD TV Play interface could get all of the track information loaded.

Enlarge/ In music playback, the Play will show what's currently playing and what's coming up.

Choose the local source before you can get to watching and listening.

Enlarge/ When you navigate away, you can see what's playing at the top of the interface.

In video playback mode, you can set up video shuffle, or you can fast forward through the timeline or manually input the point at which you want the video to begin. Pressing the Options button on the remote brings up the Settings menu, where you can set the audio track or zoom and pan. The Play features an option for lip sync correction, though we didn't come across a video file that needed correcting during the review process to actually test it. You can also post to Facebook to let your friends know what you’re watching, but there’s no sort of badge or anything of that nature, which makes us wonder what the point is.

The Play also features a slideshow mode for photos. You can individually rotate and adjust each photo, and you can upload any to Facebook or set one as a background by, again, pressing the Settings button. Western Digital says that the Play supports a myriad of file types, including AVI, MKV, MP4, FLV, and WMV9. It was finicky with certain MKV files, however—it wouldn't play some—while other files of the same type worked fine.

Is it worth it for your living room?

For those with a lot of locally stored content, the WD TV Play's support for a variety of video container formats makes it a great choice. While it doesn't offer the wealth of channels that the Roku does or some of the premium content like the Apple TV, it does feature almost all of the essential streaming services. The Play is also the best at making all of your local content available without any fuss. With the available compatibility for various file types and one-touch access to some of the most popular streaming services currently available, the Play is definitely worth considering over the alternatives.

The Good

Supports many different file types

Features channels for major streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Spotify

Remote app available for both iOS and Android

Can stream a wealth of content via DLNA or portable storage

The Bad

Some lag while skipping between songs and browsing through menus

Frankly pointless Facebook integration

Certain MKV files wouldn't play, while others worked fine

The Ugly

Still lacks some premium services like Amazon Instant Video and MLB TV, among others

I'd like to get more clarification as to why some of your mkv's would play and some wouldn't. Were there any major differences in the files that could have caused an issue outside of the Play's control or was it entirely the Play's fault? If the latter is so, are you following up with WD? Just curious. It's not terribly important I suppose. I don't have a lot of mkv's, just curious as to what might be causing the hiccup.

I have a Live TV Plus and the MKV format problems are usually sound related and it is pretty rare that I find things my box won't play. Two notes that seem to really hurt the Live TV Plus (not sure about the new Play) is it does not work well with Plex Media Server as a DLNA server. TVMoblili works fine and a few others. If you use Plex, you may want to get a Roku instead. It also does not natively connect to OSX 10.7 & 10.8 shares. You can use a product like SMBUp, but with varied results. This is the case on all WDTV products.

These are very good streaming devices. The relatively new Andorid remote is a very nice addition as it allows keyboard inputs into search boxes like Youtube. If local content is your main source of media, then WDTV boxes are probably some of the best for format compatibility overall. Just read up on the forums if you have OSX as your media server. The best solution for that I've found is running TVMobili as a DLNA server.

Which MKVs weren't supported? Local playback is nice but not if it isn't compatible with scene releases.

Also, is this a replacement for the Live? If not, why would someone choose this over the Live?

The only reason to choose this over the Live boxes is price. Having said that I'd pay the extra money for the Live simply for the mpeg2 and DTS support. I've been using them on all my tv's since I cut cable and in well over a year I've never had an MKV that wouldn't play. Actually, I've only had one file format that ever gave me issues, and it's so uncommon as to be a non-issue.

From what I've read on the WD site, this is aimed at people streaming from online services (which as pointed out by planetix, it fails at) and less at the people with local collections or streaming over their network from a DLNA source like a NMT , Plex, PlayOn, Servio , or my preferred method.. Universal Media Server. I believe it was on Cnet they were mentioning this 'Play' model doesn't have equal decoding capabilities of the most recent WDTV Live model-hence the lower entry price point..but they could have easily been mistaken..It is Cnet after all.

I never have issues with MKVs and have PCM audio piped in, Seamless AC3 playback as well as DTS-MA or HD audio decode. The real nice thing about the WDTV live (one seen in picture above for comparison of the Play box in size) boxes I picked up a refurbs for 50$ from the WD site is the audio delay option to sync manually the audio when off by a few milliseconds or so. Yes, I could have a small HTPC box and run XBMC or just use VLC or Media Player Classic HT... and TBH, I prefer the speed and picture output from the PS3.. But in combo w/ UMS, for using such low wattage (9-12 watts on killawatt when in use) and playing stuff off my server in my rack downstairs for our bedrooms--as well as it's size... The WDTV Live makes sense.

I wish the review would have tried those same MKV's using the 'older' WDTV Live box they had on hand.. then again, as I mentioned..I rarely hook up a usb drive to the unit itself. I always stream over my network from a share. The cataloging a massive HD I experience with early WDTV models from a couple years back turned me off from ever messing with directly inputting media unless I'm headed over to someone's house (which I've given these players and HDs many times as gifts for relatives).

I'm looking forward to the Ouya and other small Android based options w/ dedicated power that will utilize full hardware acceleration for XBMC. That's where low wattage, small case, full customization and playback support of XBMC will be harmoniously joined.

So... are true hardware specs no longer a thing that journalists enquire about? Do we just go off of showroom demos and PR releases? Last time I checked, they're pretty danged important, especially when the chipset is what makes or breaks a product in the savvy techie's household.

The WD set top line has, so far, been pretty lazy when it comes to implementing age-old subtitle standards, which is surprising considering how much they could rake in on sales of a unit that caters to the anime fansub scene. Have updated builds of libass on your machine and I would figure that you'll get quite a few interested parties coming out of the woodworks.

Fiddling with it at Fry's..it's definitely an upgrade compared to the last one on the Live and Live Plus... Better layout and feel to the buttons.. then again, I don't use the remote that much as I don't use the services and all that stuff...just for playback and navigation of my shares.

Still no OTA digital tuner? streaming boxes like this are nice but if they are serious about helping people cut the cord... Locally broadcasted TV content seems like the lowest hanging fruit that would help fill the gaps especially for news and sports.

Still no OTA digital tuner? streaming boxes like this are nice but if they are serious about helping people cut the cord... Locally broadcasted TV content seems like the lowest hanging fruit that would help fill the gaps especially for news and sports.

I'm curious about the author's Media Server setup. I have the previous model WD TV box and have nothing but trouble getting it to see any content on my computer, even running Plex, Servio, and just sharing the folders over my network.

Still no OTA digital tuner? streaming boxes like this are nice but if they are serious about helping people cut the cord... Locally broadcasted TV content seems like the lowest hanging fruit that would help fill the gaps especially for news and sports.

is there something I'm missing here that is preventing this?

+++++ a tuner and DVR functionality for over the air broadcasts would make this an absolute must buy!

I'm curious about the author's Media Server setup. I have the previous model WD TV box and have nothing but trouble getting it to see any content on my computer, even running Plex, Servio, and just sharing the folders over my network.

We have a shared network running in the house. I simply stream shared media from my desktop PC. Never had any issues streaming to the Xbox downstairs.

I have Allshare on my new Samsung TV (got it on black friday) I have yet to come across something that it won't play. Works with 10GB+ .mkv files without so much as a stutter over 802.11N. If you are looking for a real solution. That might be it (although admittedly more expensive)

I'm curious about the author's Media Server setup. I have the previous model WD TV box and have nothing but trouble getting it to see any content on my computer, even running Plex, Servio, and just sharing the folders over my network.

We have a shared network running in the house. I simply stream shared media from my desktop PC. Never had any issues streaming to the Xbox downstairs.

I'm going to have to start getting serious about getting a good media server pretty soon. My experience with the WD TV boxes, from a file-type standpoint, has been mostly great, so I don't mind continuing to use them. Would love to finally get rid of all the hooked-up boxes and cables.

The only reason to choose this over the Live boxes is price. Having said that I'd pay the extra money for the Live simply for the mpeg2 and DTS support. I've been using them on all my tv's since I cut cable and in well over a year I've never had an MKV that wouldn't play. Actually, I've only had one file format that ever gave me issues, and it's so uncommon as to be a non-issue.

This comment is spot on. I've used WD TV Live for years. I keep all of my large collection of movies in 1080p and music in FLAC. The Live plays everything.Apple TV is racked with compatibility issues for some of the most common formats (mkv and FLAC to name a few), so I advise people to steer clear of Apple TV unless they specifically need air share. If the WD Play can't meet the compatibility levels of the WD TV Live, then I would not recommend the Play either.If you have a WD TV, check out B-Rad firmware. YMMV, but I use it because it offers a few extra features over the standard firmware that I find useful.

No major manufacturer is going to make a box that supports easy playback of pirated content (yeah, yeah, you can rip your legally purchased DVD/BD's to mkv, sure, ok, whatever). At best it'll work as a by-product of something else, or happy accident. They aren't gonna go out of their way to make sure a high-profile h.264 video with AC3 audio in an mkv container that you downloaded will play flawlessly, with subtitles even.

The primary purpose of these things is to play streaming content. And in that regard, there are two tests to pass: How well they do it (see some of Roku's terrible/slow interfaces for how not to ) and how many they support.

In that regard, this box fails - No HBO, no Amazon, no sports packages. It's just another half-assed Netflix stream box that happens to play some local media better than others.

When either XBMC or Plex (or both, and yes I am aware the latter is a fork of the former) gets their acts together on Android - both have made great strides lately, but they aren't quite there yet - then you'll have a way to get a cheap streaming box that also plays everything you can throw at it. Until then little devices like this one here are best used to supplement better solutions for local, "ripped" content.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Totally incorrect statement. I hate when people talk when they don't know what they're talking about.

My Samsung tv has a built-in media player, and it does a very nice job of playing multiple file-types in a pinch, including .mkv files. And they play fine, with no skipping. My Panasonic blu-ray player also has support for playing .mkv files off usb or streaming, and it plays them very nicely also. I also own the WDTV Live, and it handles almost all the .mkv files I've thrown at it, including DTS and Dolby Digital audio, and it plays files even with a very high bitrate. It only seem to have an issue with profile 5.1 .mkv files, and I understand this is a common issue among many media players. Not much of an issue because most people know this and don't encode in profile 5.1.

I bought an LG blu-ray player for somebody last year for Christmas, and it also plays .mkv files flawlessly.

WD is making an honest effort here, but it's going to have a similar problem that most of these sub-$100 boxes have. Decoding abilities are dependent on hardware. It's why you'll see spotty MKV support and it's sure to have zero ability to play things like 10-bit h.264, and no path to h.265 when it starts coming out.

That being said, it's not a bad box. It's feature set and file compatibility is comparable to the old Boxee Box.

On the other hand, it's hard not to look at getting something like an Intel NUC with an XBMC distro. You have just enough power to handle some of the future formats, while maintaining the small size and low power consumption.

Miss Ion, were the MKVs that wouldn't play encoded 10-bit? I'm seeing this show up frequently now in hi-def anime reencodes. This is a limitation of hardware, not software, so unless the OEM uses a chip that specifically supports 10-bit playback, the streaming device won't play those files.

I use Serviio as my home DLNA server and have it set to transcode 10-bit to a format suitable for my WDTV Live SMP. The downside is that MKV subtitles don't survive the transcode.

No major manufacturer is going to make a box that supports easy playback of pirated content (yeah, yeah, you can rip your legally purchased DVD/BD's to mkv, sure, ok, whatever). At best it'll work as a by-product of something else, or happy accident. They aren't gonna go out of their way to make sure a high-profile h.264 video with AC3 audio in an mkv container that you downloaded will play flawlessly, with subtitles even.

You have absolutely no idea what you're rambling about, as any wdtv live user will tell you.

Miss Ion, were the MKVs that wouldn't play encoded 10-bit? I'm seeing this show up frequently now in hi-def anime reencodes. This is a limitation of hardware, not software, so unless the OEM uses a chip that specifically supports 10-bit playback, the streaming device won't play those files.

I use Serviio as my home DLNA server and have it set to transcode 10-bit to a format suitable for my WDTV Live SMP. The downside is that MKV subtitles don't survive the transcode.

I don't disagree but the argument for 10-bit when dealing with 1080p+ content is compelling, at least as much as I understood of it.

That said, I really don't like hard transcoding 30GB of material to get around the 10-bit playback issue while keeping softsubs. Reading epic tomes of forum posts for the optimum transcoding software and settings gets old fast, especially when the end result turns out to be a blase hodgepodge anime, no matter the format.

No major manufacturer is going to make a box that supports easy playback of pirated content (yeah, yeah, you can rip your legally purchased DVD/BD's to mkv, sure, ok, whatever). At best it'll work as a by-product of something else, or happy accident. They aren't gonna go out of their way to make sure a high-profile h.264 video with AC3 audio in an mkv container that you downloaded will play flawlessly, with subtitles even.

The primary purpose of these things is to play streaming content. And in that regard, there are two tests to pass: How well they do it (see some of Roku's terrible/slow interfaces for how not to ) and how many they support.

In that regard, this box fails - No HBO, no Amazon, no sports packages. It's just another half-assed Netflix stream box that happens to play some local media better than others.

When either XBMC or Plex (or both, and yes I am aware the latter is a fork of the former) gets their acts together on Android - both have made great strides lately, but they aren't quite there yet - then you'll have a way to get a cheap streaming box that also plays everything you can throw at it. Until then little devices like this one here are best used to supplement better solutions for local, "ripped" content.

I use the WD TV Live currently (and I had an earlier generation WD TV Live Plus for a few years before that). Note that the WD TV Live is a little different from the WD TV Play that this article reviewed - but I think it's safe to say that they're quite similar. In my experience, the WD TV Live is just about ideal for playing 'ripped' content. It's extremely rare that I run up against a file type that this thing can't play - and it navigates and finds content easily. All I had to do was set up my media folders as "shared", and I could navigate straight to them and play content.

Here is the specifications page for the WD TV Live, listing the file formats supported. I'm not an expert, but like I said, I haven't run into a file that this thing can't play in some time.

I investgated using a different type of streaming box, but apparently playing local content isn't easy at all with a Roku, or other similar boxes. Not having Amazon Instant or HBO Go is definitely a drawback, but playing local video content makes the WD TV devices totally worth the $70 or $100 in my experience.

I currently use Plex as a DLNA server to my Samsung TV. It works well, but there are annoyances. I can't get subtitles from a separate .srt file to work, but they'll work fine on a thumb drive plugged into the TV. The only skipping options are "time search" which skips one minute at a time and can't be held down, or just pressing left/right during playback, which only skips 30 seconds or something. This makes it hard to quickly skip later into the video. This problem is made worse by the fact that it sometimes randomly skips to the next file during playback, making me have to load the last file and FF to where I was.

I have a feeling most boxes like this WD box will have their own set of issues acting as a DLNA client for Plex. It's for this reason that I'm waiting for the perfect $99 Google TV box to come out, something that has a smooth UI and good enough hardware, to use with the Plex Android app. They just recently overhauled it so I'm hopeful that will be the best, most polished experience.